I foster kittens for the county shelter.
Last Saturday, I offered to take in another sick kitten. At the time, I had four healthy fosters in the spare room (mode: easy) and one kitten with a mild upper respiratory infection in my office. The new kitten had a more severe upper respiratory infection, so the plan was to keep her in my bedroom. No problem.
I went to my detached garage to get in my car to drive to the shelter. And kittens skittered out of the way. Not my kittens. Just... kittens. In the half-second I had to see them, they looked young enough to still be socialized.
So I went to the shelter to pick up the sick kitten, and the foster coordinator agreed to add the garage kittens to their program if I was willing to foster them. Then I came home and set up a trap.
Ninety minutes later there were two cats in the trap — a kitten and the kitten's mom. That mom turned out to be the cat that my neighbor has been trying to trap since April. I didn't want to just release her, because she clearly needs to be spayed, but the first rule of managing a cat colony is "Don't trap cats unless you have a plan." I didn't have a plan for this cat.
My county is kind of terrible for dealing with feral spay/neuters. The surrounding counties all have programs, and we have to scramble for limited surgery spots there. The only place that doesn't book things a month in advance opens up ten slots every night at 10pm. If you can get one of those slots, you bring the cat in a trap at 7am. But they don't do Sundays and I couldn't leave the mom cat in the trap until Monday (or later). Plus, I needed the trap to get the other kitten(s).
Anyhow, that's why I have an adult feral in a dog crate in my bedroom, two not-yet-socialized kittens in the tub, two kittens with upper respiratory infections in my office, and four healthy kittens in the spare bedroom. And there may be a third kitten out in the garage or somewhere nearby.
The good news is that I managed to snag a spot to get the feral mom spayed Tuesday morning. All I have to do is get her from the dog crate into the trap again so I can drive her an hour away to the SPCA. This ought to be fun!
Say hello to these spicy sisters...
9 comments:
Aww! Hello spicy sisters!
Are you doing Horrordailies this year? I don't even know if they're going to host them again. I'm planning on doing it anyway.
Ooh, I hadn't even thought about Horrordailies. I still have two days to come up with a plan, so maybe? I'll ask Richard & Jennifer if they're planning on hosting it in any case!
The Horrordailies registration is open now!
When we lived in Austin, we trapped ferals for a while. We took them in and had them spayed neutered. I don't know how you do all that you do. It was exhausting for us. And the vets/shelters are always overwhelmed with kittens left on their doorstep. We did trap and release with a few of them, adopted three? or four...found homes for two. Where we live in NM, it's more dogs dropped off in the wilderness where the "owners" just hope and assume they can make it on their own (hint: They cannot). I'm grateful for all you are doing because I know it is hard work. I hope you are able to find homes very, very soon for the healthy ones to make room for the new ones. And I hope they heal quickly and also find homes. Glad you found a place to get the female spayed. I remember making those phone calls and trying to find a place. We had to drive pretty far more than once and reassure the shelters we would come back to pick up the cats...
The best part about fostering for the county shelter is they handle the adoptions. Once the kittens big enough for surgery, they go back to the shelter and stay in the adoption room until they have a home, which usually only takes a few days.
I'm glad about the adoptions and thank you for saving them even though it's hard work! Also thank you for the spooky story this morning. I enjoyed it. I can't ever figure out patreon--what I'm allowed to read or not read and I am not allowed to comment. But I did enjoy the story and am looking forward to Dragon Fortune! (Is that the title?)
Oops, that one wasn't actually supposed to be public, but it's fine — I'm glad you liked it! (I guess now I have to figure out why Patreon is defaulting to making all the posts public. I swear, Patreon messes with things just to mess with them.)
And yes, it's Dragon Fortune! I need to upload the final version in the next couple days.
I can't read the posts. But that was a pdf so when I clicked on it and "logged in" I was able to read it. I didn't try downloading it. I've never been able to read the posts other than a short snippet. I can't comment or do much of anything really. This was the first time I was able to read anything and it was pdf format. Not sure if that was somehow different than other posts or downloads.
And I'll be watching for Dragon Fortune over on Kobo!
Post a Comment